a. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to updating the modification time of a file in a cluster system.
b. Related Art
In a Unix filesystem, a record is kept of the time at which the last modification of a file took place. In a cluster system, it is possible that a given file may be modified simultaneously from multiple nodes. In this scenario, the system must guarantee that the modification time for the file is accurately maintained.
One approach to modification time maintenance is to require a node to obtain exclusive access to the modification time whenever it modifies a file. This approach however, leads to contention among the nodes in the system.